The heated debate surrounding the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines is over, and we’ve had time to explore them (and maybe even shift our food choices based on them). So how are they looking, nearly three months in? We asked some leading experts what they think: what’s missing, what they like and a pointer they think we should take to heart. Here’s what they said by email.
Author: WHES
Asia’s demand for lentils means North American farms switch to pulses
With vegetarians in Asia hungry for lentils, chickpeas and other sources of protein, North American farmers are swapping out wheat in favor of pulses — plants harvested for their dry seeds, such as legumes. AGT Food and Ingredients Inc., the world’s largest exporter of peas and lentils, says farmers in Canada are poised to seed record acres of the crops this year.
El Niño upsets seasons and upends lives worldwide.WHO estimates that changes induced by El Niño are putting 60 million people at increased risk of malnutrition and illnesses.
In rural villages in Africa and Asia, and in urban neighborhoods in South America, millions of lives have been disrupted by weather linked to the strongest El Niño in a generation. In some parts of the world, the problem has been not enough rain; in others, too much. Downpours were so bad in Paraguay’s capital, Asunción, that shantytowns sprouted along city streets, filled with families displaced by floods. But farmers in India had the opposite problem: Reduced monsoon rains forced them off the land and into day-labor jobs.
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The strange and surprising debate over how to help a malnourished kid
It used to be common knowledge: Malnourished kids need more protein to thrive. Then came a scathing paper in the Lancet in 1974 called “The Great Protein Fiasco.” Filled with sarcasm, it argued that the nutrition community’s fixation on protein was a waste of time and money.
Boko Haram is losing, but so is food production
Nigeria’s war against Boko Haram is finally swinging in the government’s favour, but it’s going to take much longer for food production to recover in the country’s northeast. The same is true in neighbouring Cameroon, which has also felt the impact of the violence.
Near the U.S. Capitol, an encampment of the homeless is removed by city workers
See related story He made a promise to help others. Now he’s giving tents to the homeless. Arnold Harvey began bringing food and clothes to the homeless on his trash route about a decade ago. Petula Dvorak Washington Post October 19, 2015
The city told the homeless men and women camped under the H Street bridge that their belongings would be removed at 10 a.m. sharp Thursday. The city was right on time. At the top of the hour, workers wearing gloves and carrying shovels and rakes moved in to begin ridding the sidewalk of evidence of the tents and personal items of 15 or so homeless people under the bridge in Northeast Washington, just steps from Union Station and a few blocks from the Capitol.
Citing poverty’s toll on children, pediatricians call for a stronger safety net
Pediatricians have unique insights into children’s health and development, so yesterday’s statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that “child poverty in the United States [is] unacceptable and detrimental to the health and well-being of children” that calls for increased aid to poor children and their families deserves close attention.
Sergio Arellano Stark, driver of the ‘Caravan of Death’ (a helicopter-borne killing squad) under Pinochet, dies at 94
Sergio Arellano Stark, a Chilean army general who led the “Caravan of Death,” a helicopter-borne killing squad that helped establish Augusto Pinochet’s iron grip on power in the 1970s, died March 9 in the capital city of Santiago. He was 94.
Obituary in memory of Dr. Urban Jonsson
Urban Jonsson, a national of Sweden and resident of Tanzania, held a Ph.D. in Food Science with focus on Nutrition. He pursued advanced training on nutrition at Cornell University and lifelong studies in philosophy, mathematics and a series of other disciplines in order to build his impressive competence within the broad areas of development and human rights, often with the problems of nutrition and hunger as the point of reference.
